It’s got to be one of the shortest — and strangest — baby names out there: According to news reports, a Chinese couple recently tried to name their baby “@”.
Because the Mandarin language uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words, the @ symbol, when translated, means “love him,” the child’s father told the country’s State Language Commission. (Many Chinese e-mail users apparently use the English word “at,” which, with a drawn out “T,” sounds something like “ai ta,” or “love him.”)
It hasn’t been revealed whether the name was accepted, but earlier this year China’s government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.
There was also no word on whether the child’s surname could possibly mean “dot-com,” or if the middle name might translate to “yahoo.”
High tech dollar bill
Moving from @ to $, the U.S. C-note is about to get a high-tech facelift. The new $100 bill, which bears the likeness of Benjamin Franklin, will combine micro-printing with tiny lenses: 650,000 of them on a single bill.
The lenses will magnify the printing so that Franklin’s mug appears to move when the note moves. It wasn’t clear, however, whether Franklin would wink, smile or perhaps wave goodbye.
This change is being made in an attempt to thwart U.S. counterfeiters, whose favourite target is the $100 bill. Now, they’ll have to move on to the $1,000. The bill is expected to go into circulation late next year.
I got the music in me
Lastly, moving from money to music, Japanese researchers have developed head gear that uses infrared sensors and a microcomputer to let people operate music players by clenching their teeth.
Apparently, the gadget receives a command when the user clenches his or her teeth for about one second, which differentiates the action from other activities such as chewing gum and talking. Grinding one’s right teeth plays and halts music on an iPod, while clenching left teeth makes it skip to the next track. (If you’ve heard the latest Britney Spears single, however, you probably understand the association between clenched teeth and tunes.)
